Women Speak Out !

The Women Speak Out project runs from inside the Women’s Resource Centre, and we are looking for women who have experienced inequality, discrimination or marginalisation to be filmed for our series of mini documentaries (a few mins in length), aimed at giving disadvantaged women a voice. We want to empower women to tell their stories, to speak out about the issues they’ve faced, and challenge the ‘benefits street discourse’ we hear in much of the media today. We will provide media training to the women involved in the project, so that if they choose to, they have the skills and confidence required to speak to journalists about their stories. The aim of this is to give women control of their narrative, and put a face to the issues at hand. We will also be organising dates when the women involved in the project can attend events with decision makers, with the hope that they can effect change on policies that deeply affect their lives. We link the women’s stories to government policy, arguing what could be done differently.

Our message is that women experience disadvantage in almost all areas of life, and women’s lives are getting worse across the board as they suffer most from cuts to public spending. (Some issues we are interested in/have covered: unemployment, immigration, detention of women, welfare cuts, domestic abuse, disability benefits, sexism in the workplace, maternity discrimination, racism, pension inequality, childcare costs, tax credits, carers, poverty – the list goes on).

However as we understand that vulnerable women might not want to publicise their story in this way – there is also the option to film the video in an anonymised way if the participant wishes. If some women choose not to work with the media, that is completely OK, we are just grateful to each individual woman for sharing her time and her story with us so it can be uploaded onto our website; they are still contributing to raising awareness of the important issues at hand.

Do you know any women linked to your organisation that might like to get involved? Or do you think any of your service users might be interested? If so please do share this information with them – or put them in touch with Florence here at WRC on 02076973467/ florence@wrc.org.uk . There is also a form they can fill out on the website.